You thought there couldn’t be a law and religion angle to today’s news—fascinating for us history nerds—that archaeologists have discovered the mortal remains of Richard III beneath a parking lot in Leicester? Think again. Plans are underway to re-inter the bones in the city’s Anglican Cathedral. Not so fast, say some: the hunchback king wasn’t a Protestant, but a Catholic, and he requires a Catholic burial. In fact, as Shakespeare fans know, Richard died at Bosworth Field (“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”), defending his throne from Henry Tudor. Henry went on to reign as Henry VII; his son, Henry VIII, broke with Rome. As The Tablet’s blog argued this morning, “Had Richard prevailed at the Battle of Bosworth Field, there would have been no Henry VII, therefore no Henry VIII and no Reformation. England today might still be a Catholic country.” Think of it: no Reformation, no Established Church, no Archbishop Laud, no Puritans, no Great Migration — no Massachusetts! — and no Establishment Clause. Surely there’s a law review article in there somewhere.
Leicester Cathedral seems to know it’s facing a sensitive situation. A Catholic priest is keeping watch over Richard’s remains (as is an Anglican, I believe), and the cathedral is planning a “multifaith” burial ceremony. Personally, I’m not sure why English Catholics are so keen to claim Richard, anyway. They must be forgetting the nephews in the Tower.
Mark Movsesian is Director of the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University.
February 4th, 2013 | 1:44 pm
About those nephews in the Tower: please check out Josephine Tey’s THE DAUGHTER OF TIME.
February 4th, 2013 | 2:30 pm
Reminds of the “last Confederate funeral,” which took place in 2004 a few years after the wreck of the Confederate submarine HL Hunley was discovered with its crew inside. Real bodies, a real funeral, but with most folks dressed up in Civil War-era garb: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0416_040416_hunleyfuneral.html
February 4th, 2013 | 2:33 pm
No one is forgetting the Princes in the Tower. But it is far from clear that King Richard had his nephews executed.
February 4th, 2013 | 2:40 pm
Richard III has always gotten a bad rap. Give him a Christian burial, Catholic preferably, what is the big deal?
February 4th, 2013 | 2:47 pm
Amen to Fr. Stehly’s suggestion. Good book. Sadly, those who wrote the history of this period were the usurpers. God only knows who murdered the little princes. A good lesson for us today not to simply trust the “sound bites” but instead take time to read and do some critical thinking. Thanks for the great article.
February 4th, 2013 | 2:55 pm
I sent an email to the Bishop of Nottingham (the diocese where Leicester is located), right about the time you made your post, asking him if Richard would be having a Catholic burial and what the Church’s involvement in his burial would be.
Thanks for the post.
February 4th, 2013 | 3:16 pm
>… the hunchback king wasn’t a Protestant,
>but a Catholic ….
I trust you realize that is the Catholic view of things. It’s not as if Protestants believe they invented the church in the 16th century, and all who came before them were from a different church.
February 4th, 2013 | 3:19 pm
Yes, he was a Catholic and if those who buried him had more respect for the dead, he would have had a proper burial, even if he was a cad, which we do not know for sure. The Tudors greatly benefited from the legends.
February 4th, 2013 | 3:25 pm
Thomas More also was critical of him, while not necessarily that big on Henry VII, so he may really have had some tyrannical qualities.
Still it might be a desire for accuracy as much as anything. He wasn’t an Anglican, Anglicans didn’t really exist yet, so good or bad he is one of ours.
February 4th, 2013 | 3:46 pm
1. Would living descendants be involved in a decision about a burial?
2. As King Richard was a King of England, would the current monarchy be involved in such a decision?
3. Not being a close watcher of royal genealogy, I’m not sure of any overlap between group 1 and 2.
February 4th, 2013 | 4:00 pm
Thank God for Massachusetts!
February 4th, 2013 | 4:13 pm
I believe that if Richard III was born, raised and died in the Catholic faith…he should receive a Catholic buriel regardless of what the Archbishop of Canterbury says. How would the Arhbishop feel if we planted him in a catholic buriel spot :-)
February 4th, 2013 | 4:39 pm
Time to join most serious historians (e.g. Charles Ross) and get past the theories of novelist Tey and her legions of sighing teen-girl fans who see in Richard the dark and dangerous man that they could save with their love. We’ll never know for sure about the Princes in the Tower, but waving around a popular novel does nothing to alter the fact that the preponderance of the evidence points to Richard. BUT he was a good king in other ways, and popular among those who knew him best. He also spent lavishly on that great papist tradition, Christmas. Dying bravely in battle, he had lots if time to repent his sins, and should have a Catholic funeral and burial.
February 4th, 2013 | 4:58 pm
I am personally an atheist, however if this were the remains of a person of, for example Hindu Faith, then a non Hindu Faith service or burial would be deemed totally inappropriate. Richard the Third should therefore not just be interred with a Roman Catholic ceremony and burial but consideration might be given to the old form Latin Rites as would have been appropriate – a ceremony in the vernacular would not have taken place in 1485
February 4th, 2013 | 5:10 pm
What a great post, Mark. The American project rests on the death in battle of one man: Richard Plantagenet. I’ve never considered it; and while I’ve always been sympathetic to Richard, and find myself oddly touched by his re-discovery and eventual sacred burial (however it’s done), I’m even more perplexed now by the greater mystery you’ve suggested.
Was the unjust reputation of Richard the “cost” that had to be paid for all the goods that the advent of America has brought to our world?
February 4th, 2013 | 6:30 pm
For Catholics to argue for this is a lose-lose situation; I don’t recommend it.
For those curious about the Yorkist lines (oh, there are several contenders) of pretence, this is the go-to:
http://my.raex.com/~obsidian/Britpret.html
February 4th, 2013 | 6:46 pm
Burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy. Praying for the dead is a spiritual work of mercy. Why it would not be incumbent upon the Church to do both is uncertain.
The idea that either job should be pawned off on the established gaggle of navel-gazing usurpers is stuff and nonsense.
February 4th, 2013 | 6:50 pm
Reading the articles, it appears he’s already HAD a Catholic burial. He was buried by the Franciscans in their Abbey, it’s just that Henry VIII raised it when he took the church’s lands. So this isn’t a full funeral so much as a translation of an already-buried body….. He HAD been buried in consecrated ground… actually, is it still considered consecrated ground once it’s paved over?
February 4th, 2013 | 9:08 pm
One wonders if Richard the Third was just nominally a Catholic. At least according to the greatest playwright and writer of all time, the King was a murderous thug. My guess is, if Shakespeare’s play reflects reality to some extent, the King worshipped at the altar of power and control.
February 5th, 2013 | 12:41 am
I vote he should be re-interred with a multi-faith ceremony. I’m one who believes that the ‘winners wrote history’ and the preponderance of evidence does NOT point to Richard as the villain, nor is it definite he was hunchbacked. The remains might be able to straighten out this idea (pun not intended). (Also, I realize my ‘vote’ is worthless.)
February 5th, 2013 | 5:11 am
Bret Lythgoe
He was baptised a Catholic and not subject to any ecclesiastical censure at the time of his death, so, in the external forum, he must be considered a Catholic and entitled to the rites of the Church.
I would add, although this is irrelevant to his Catholic status, that there is no credible and reliable evidence that he was art and part in the murder of his nephews; the circumstances of their deaths was suspicious and he was the chief gainer by it; this does not establish guilt, even on the balance of probabilities.
February 5th, 2013 | 6:01 am
As G.K. Chesterton said, in the death of King Richard III we see “the death of an epoch, the death of a great civilization, the death of something which once sang to the sun in the canticle of St. Francis and sailed to the ends of the earth in the ships of the First Crusade, but which in peace wearied and turned its weapons inwards, wounded its own brethren, broke its own loyalties, gambled for the crown, and grew feverish even about the creed, and has this one grace among its dying virtues, that its valour is the last to die.
“But whatever else may have been bad or good about Richard of Gloucester, there was a touch about him which makes him truly the last of the mediæval kings. It is expressed in the one word which he cried aloud as he struck down foe after foe in the last charge at Bosworth–treason. For him, as for the first Norman kings, treason was the same as treachery; and in this case at least it was the same as treachery. When his nobles deserted him before the battle, he did not regard it as a new political combination, but as the sin of false friends and faithless servants. Using his own voice like the trumpet of a herald, he challenged his rival to a fight as personal as that of two paladins of Charlemagne. His rival did not reply, and was not likely to reply. The modern world had begun. The call echoed unanswered down the ages; for since that day no English king has fought after that fashion.”
From his brilliant “Short History of England” (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20897/20897-h/20897-h.htm)
February 5th, 2013 | 7:53 am
Ah, the price of amorality. He lost Bosworth because his generals refused to help him because he was pretty much a tyrant. As for the princes dying, even if he was not behind their murder, he was their Lord Protector and he failed to protect them. But as bad as he was, do not blame him for Massachusetts.
February 5th, 2013 | 8:40 am
Matthew
Andrew Lang in his life of St Joan of Arc has an even more telling account.
“It is said by some who were present, that even the English Cardinal, Beaufort, wept when he saw the Maid die: “crocodiles’ tears!” One of the secretaries of Henry VI. (who himself was only a little boy) said, “We are all lost. We have burned a Saint!”
They were all lost. The curse of their cruelty did not depart from them. Driven by the French and Scots from province to province, and from town to town, the English returned home, tore and rent each other; murdering their princes and nobles on the scaffold, and slaying them as prisoners of war on the field; and stabbing and smothering them in chambers of the Tower; York and Lancaster devouring each other; the mad Henry VI. was driven from home to wander by the waves at St. Andrews, before he wandered back to England and the dagger stroke—these things were the reward the English won, after they had burned a Saint. They ate the bread and drank the cup of their own greed and cruelty all through the Wars of the Roses. They brought shame upon their name which Time can never wash away; they did the Devil’s work, and took the Devil’s wages. Soon Henry VIII. was butchering his wives and burning Catholics and Protestants, now one, now the other, as the humour seized him.”
February 5th, 2013 | 9:10 am
Yes, King Richard was a Catholic and should therefore have a Catholic burial, but has anybody given any thought to the facxt that during his lifetime Richard expressed the wish that he should be buried at Richmond? I doubt if he, or his family would be happy with him being buried in the place where he was betrayed and killed by his enemies.
February 5th, 2013 | 10:28 am
He was buried within a catholic church already unfortunately the grounds were destroys by henry viii, maybe because he knew richard was there who knows?? However he should placed where all other monarch have been placed people may believe he was a tyrant but he was still a King therefore deserves a royal burial, henry viii was a swine yet we gave him a royal burial. It must be within a catholic grounds though as c of e did not exist in his time.
February 5th, 2013 | 12:20 pm
Despite Richard III’s murder of his nephews, his remains must, nevertheless, be buried with the due reverence mandated by the Church for any human being. The status of his soul has already been adjudicated by the Righteous Judge. As long as there is proper burial, I find little sense in debating this between Canterbury and Rome.
February 5th, 2013 | 1:02 pm
If he is not to be buried in Westminster Abbey, along with other English kings and with his beloved wife Queen Anne, then he should definitely be buried in York Minster.
After all the City of York stood up for him all along ‘King Richard, late mercifully reigning over us, was through great treason . . . piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city,’ reported the mayor’s serjeant of the mace a day after Richard’s death at the Battle of Bosworth on August 22, 1485.
February 5th, 2013 | 1:32 pm
Rachel, the problem is that “where all other monarchs have been placed” is Westminster Abbey — an Anglican church. You can’t HAVE a Catholic ceremony there, and it’s not “Catholic grounds.”
February 5th, 2013 | 2:14 pm
Since the reign of George III, English monarchs have been buried at Windsor, in St George’s Chapel (the Chapel of the Knights of the Garter), except for Queen Victoria and Edward VIII, who are buried in the Frogmore Mausoleum in Windsor Great Park.
Richard III constructed a chantry chapel at Richmond in Yorkshire, so that might be seen as an appropriate choice.
February 5th, 2013 | 3:18 pm
Chesterton was right about Richard’s having been the last of the mediaeval kings. This is the source of the nostalgia about him. Henry VII has had a good press simply because his granddaughter was the (miscalled) ‘Good Queen Bess’. Richard has fans today who take the opposite view of the Tudors who supplanted him, and therefore feel good about Richard. He can’t be ‘proved’ to have killed his nephews, but we know for sure that he murdered Lords Rivers and Hastings without trial, so he was probably ‘good for’ the other crime. On the other hand, Henry VII murdered Clarence’s son, and Henry VIII his innocent and aged daughter, and didn’t even bother to cover up those crimes. Richard left an endowment for 100 priests to chant his requiems in perpetuity, so his conscience undoubtedly bothered him, which is more than one can say for the beastly Tudors.
February 5th, 2013 | 4:06 pm
I think most of us realize that Richard III was not as bad as his Tudor press (including the Bard, natch) made him out to be, nor was Henry Tudor as good.
I think it probable, but hardy certain, that the Princes in the Tower died – really, were killed – during his reign, and therefore that it is likely that he had a role, even if in a Henry II/Becket sense, in their murders. “Likely,” I say, “probable,” I aver – but not certain. There’s just too little evidence to go on at the distance of five centuries.
But even so, what good evidence we do have is that Richard III was really no worse than most of England’s medieval and renaissance monarchs (or, indeed, nobles), and by all odds more competent than most (if a lot unluckier). I do not see why any of this should prevent the kind of Christian burial that we know Richard himself wanted: A proper, dignified Catholic burial in York. York Minster would normally be the ideal, but the Church of England owns that now. If Archbishop Sentamu will not permit such a service or burial at York Minster, perhaps St. Wilfrid’s would take it on.
Let Leicester build a museum about him and be content with that. After all, they had his body for five centuries.
February 5th, 2013 | 4:10 pm
Hello Thomas,
Thomas More also was critical of him, while not necessarily that big on Henry VII, so he may really have had some tyrannical qualities.”
More was simply relying on what information his mentor, John Morton, Henry VII’s Archbishop of Canterbury (and mortal enemy of Richard III) provided him. In short, More’s account is really Morton’s. That doesn’t make it valueless, but it is a “party” document.
February 5th, 2013 | 4:53 pm
Thanks for the correction, Michael. Same point though — those who want Richard buried with the monarchs can’t have both that and a Catholic funeral, since the monarchs (with two exceptions) are buried in places that are now Anglican churches.
February 7th, 2013 | 6:17 am
No one has commented on the courage of York City Council in publicly registering sorrow and grief at Richard’s death and praising his qualities,this was particularly brave because with typical Tudor double dealing he dated his reign from the day before Bosworth thus main anyone who fought for Richard or gave any form of support to the anointed king a traitor. For this reason alone he should be buried in Yorkshire where the population have always remained loyal to him. I do not think he would lie easy in the same place as all those Tudors.
February 9th, 2013 | 2:44 am
Whatever do you mean about ‘the nephews in the Tower’? We have no idea what happened to these boys, and there is no proof that they were killed by anyone. (Later a very convincing person appeared claiming to be one of them.) But even if you assume that Richard III killed them, isn’t it our Catholic duty to pray for the souls of the dead – especially those who most need our prayers? Your implied comment that if someone sinned we should caste them out amazed and horrified me!
February 10th, 2013 | 2:42 am
My first thought is that *of course* he should have a Catholic ceremony – he was Catholic! Anything else would be insulting, disrespectful, arrogant. However, two things: it has been determined that he’s already had a liturgical burial (this was done routinely, even to executed criminals), &, when they say “interfaith”, they mean differing flavors of Christianity, not Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist/Rastafarian elements. Still wrong, but not as heinous (& before anyone thinks I’m being bigoted, *I’m* a Jew!). But, as someone else has so rightly pointed out, Westminster is Anglican – it would be inappropriate to have a Catholic ceremony in it (unless, of course, the Archbishop & HM want to be charitable; his *wife* is there – to me, that should be the deciding factor). Unfortunately, all who should be most concerned have dropped back & punted, hiding behind the immediate legalities to let the municipality (or is it the school?) decide.
(And, an aside: Just because Thomas More is a saint doesn’t mean he actually knew anything about Richard III; he was five years old when Richard was killed. I think we can safely rule him out as a contemporary…)
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